#19758 - 06/22/0704:57 PMRe: Next Gen 990 suggestions
gonk
Desperado
Registered: 03/21/01
Posts: 14054
Loc: Memphis, TN USA
The chipset can do all of the v1.3 spec'd capabilities (we assume, in the absence of proof one way or another), but nobody bothered to include an option in the firmware to enable bitstream output. That's all code that is going to be tied to an individual player manufacturer's interface design, so I can see where no amount of embedded code would solve that - you can't force bitstream output, after all, so you need to rely on the manufacturer to stick in a setting somewhere to select between decoded PCM or raw bitstream. I suspect that the rationalization (assuming that either company would comment on it) would be that when both the Samsung BD-P1200 and the Sony PS3 were released, no hardware existed that could accept said bitstreams, so they didn't want to give the consumer the option of turning on a feature that then would not work. That would match well with the industry-wide history of DVD players whose default DTS output is PCM rather than bitstream - it took us until the last three years or so to start seeing players consistently default to bitstream, even though DTS decoding in new receivers has been common for easily six (or maybe even seven) years. Is it a good rationalization? No, it's a pretty poor one, so hopefully firmware updates will start addressing this before too long.